


Blood

by randomfatechidna



Series: Hunger Games 'Verse [4]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Hunger Games Setting, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-25
Updated: 2014-02-25
Packaged: 2018-01-13 18:57:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,140
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1237393
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/randomfatechidna/pseuds/randomfatechidna
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Maybe Dean isn't grateful for anything in this Arena. Hunger Games AU</p>
            </blockquote>





	Blood

The first thing Dean notices, as the glass cylinder lifts him into the Arena, is that it's raining. It's everywhere. Where it hits him, the rain feels like soft bullets. Dean's clothes are immediately soaked. Drenched. Puddles form in the dirt all around him. The mud splashes as the rain hits it. Whatever part of the Arena he could see from his starting plate is brown with mud. There is nothing to help any of the tributes wade through it. Dean's jacket is lightweight but not waterproof, his stylist didn't think of that. There had been rumours that the tributes were going to be put in dry, arid conditions. He can't help feeling the Capitol started those rumours themselves so that they could shock Panem with a swamp. Dean counts himself down from sixty, slowly. There's no use getting blown up before he can do any damage. 

On the opposite side of the circle, a girl from District Six steps off her plate early. A male scream and the cannon tear across the Arena. The male tribute from Six puts his hands over his ears and crouches down. Crying. She had nothing to live for, Dean thinks. He does. Dean closes his eyes in his last seconds before the Game begins and thinks of Sam. I gotta get home to Sam. Doing this for Sam. I'm gonna see Sammy again. Dean almost smiles. Almost. Now it isn't his own voice in his head, but his father's telling him to get the knife from the Cornucopia. Get anything. Get anything and run. You gotta get out before they get to you. Dean's expression hardens. After he counts himself down to one, he leaps off his plate. 

He isn't expecting the mud to be so sticky. His sneakers repel some of the mud, one of the things his stylist actually got right, but Dean is still finding it hard to get a solid grip on the ground. The incessant rain makes it hard to tell if anyone slips, but his focus is solely on trying to get from A to B, anyway. Despite the low visibility, he can hear screaming and the cannon. He's not even halfway there and the bloodbath has started. Dean tunes it out. The screams become white noise. He gets in and gets out. There are three knives with black hilts next to an axe of the same colour, and he sweeps up all three, stowing them into a backpack. He doesn't look around. He doesn't check who's already out of the Game. He'll have time for that tonight. He runs. 

Dean finds that the further away he runs from the Cornucopia, the less sticky the mud becomes and the easier it is to walk. Fallen leaves still slip him up every once in a while, but time makes it easier to navigate the forest. The rain has eased up, and Dean breathes in to smell the leaves. He used to love the freshness of the air after rain. The chill in the air. The sound of the birds starting to chirp again. Now the thought makes his stomach roil and his head pound. 

It isn't cold, which is the only thing that Dean is grateful for. He can't imagine starting a fire in the damp brush. The air settles around him as the rain stops, finally, but the temperature doesn't drop. It is warm. Warm and comforting. Dean pinches himself. The warmth may be comforting, but it’s making his eyes droop and he can feel himself become less alert. He's tiring way too fast. Maybe Dean isn't grateful for anything in this Arena.

As Dean walks, he doesn't see anyone. He doesn't see any food, either. No berries or animals or trees that he recognises that have edible leaves. Crap, he thinks wildly. The food is all back at the Cornucopia. Shit.

That's when he hears Sam. Dean always knew he would come, but not this early into the Game. "You'll be fine, Dean. Can you just breathe for me?"

Dean lets out a breath. And breathes in. He struggles with his breathing for a moment, angry that it's so laboured, until he regains control of his lungs. 'Okay,' Dean says in his head. 'Okay, Sammy. I got it.'

He can feel Sam's presence leave his head. 'I am not going to stress out again.' Dean tells himself. He's just got to keep breathing slow and clear. Slow and clear. 

Dean can feel the sun setting - 'Man, how long have I been walking?' - and manages to find a large bush to sleep under. The air is still heavy on his skin. Dean finds no trouble falling asleep with the slow wind and quiet as his lullaby.

:::

John Winchester sits lazily on the sofa, legs spread wide and arms loose, a bottle of Jack half empty in his hand. His eyes are half-shut and mouth slack. Dean sighs. He walks over to his father and pries the bottle from his hand. In the midst of unfolding a blanket for John, Dean hears the Projector chirp that the recap for today's Games is playing. He throws the blanket onto his father and sits on the sofa. 

"Today, on the Hunger Games: three deaths that will surprise you, and-"

Dean doesn't hear the rest. Instead, he sits forward in his seat and freezes there. Not his brother not today not today not his brother. Dean breaks every single one of his rules and takes the Jack from where he left it on the floor. He ignores the fire as it ignites his throat on the slide down. His father has it easy. He can just pass out whenever he likes. Drink himself into oblivion. Not wake up the next day if he doesn't want to. But Dean refuses to give up. Refuses. Sammy needs somebody to pray for him. Somebody to be there when he comes home. If that person isn't going to be his father, it will be Dean, who was more of a father to Sam anyway.

John stirs and Dean returns the bottle to him. It's the only thing John wants, now: a nice alcoholic drink before he passes out for the night. Lovely. Dean returns his focus back on the Projector. Sam isn't there. For a moment, a spark of hope, brighter than the small flame that already burns, ignites his heart. But it's only for a moment. There is still fifteen minutes left and the Capitol always leaves the deaths to the end so that the viewers watch the recap until the end. He always hated that. After everything the Tributes had been through, they were reduced to a marketing technique. 

The Projector shows Jo, and Dean relaxes. Maybe if she's with Sam he has a chance of surviving. A chance of actually leaving that Hell. She's pinned down by an axe beneath a red haired girl - Naomi, from District 7 - who, after some discussion, releases her and shakes her hand. Oh, Dean thinks. Dean recognises Naomi as a girl who is part of the Alliance. Oh. 

Dean dares to take his eyes off the screen the check the time. His wristwatch says eight-twenty but the wall clock reads eight-twenty-three. Dean decides to believe the wall clock but then changes his mind. Whatever clock he decides reads the truth, the recap would finish soon. Dean decides that he doesn't really want to know who's died today. Wristwatch it is, then. 

The face of the girl Jo shook hands with appears on the screen. Apparently, Jo poisoned her. Meat a little too rare and berries that kill. Nobody in the Alliance suspects her. They keep replaying the clip of Naomi clutching her chest and leaning forward. Over and over. Heaving and retching until everything had come up. Falling asleep and never waking up. Dean guesses she didn't get the berries out fast enough. He's glad it wasn't Sam. The voiceover retells some of her highlights in the Game. The screen shows Naomi fishing, killing, and hunting. 

Dean puts the turn in his stomach down to the Jack.

They show a girl Dean doesn't know. She's strong, and acts tough, but it isn't enough. They show a tribute cutting her arm deep and running away before finishing the job. Her arm is covered in blood before the other tribute leaves the bounds of the camera. The girl curls up. The microphones pick up her whimpering. She dies of blood loss that night. The girl looked like she just scraped twelve years old. Sam's age. Dean pretends that he doesn't wince. He doesn't know who he's fooling, anyway. His father is too passed out to even notice that his youngest son is in the Games, let alone that his oldest is barely coping. Dean wonders how Jo's family is holding up. For some reason, for a moment, Dean is convinced that she will win. Then he realises that that means that Sam would never come home. 

He doesn't know if the families of tributes are allowed to keep the bodies of their family and friends. He usually busied himself so that he wouldn't have to go to anyone's memorial. He knew the tributes when they were alive, he didn't need to show anyone that he cared after their death. The dead remember.

It's the last face that pops up on the screen that knocks the breath right out of Dean's chest and sends him sliding to the floor. He knows he's saying something, muttering a litany of /something/ under his breath, but he can't hear. A buzz overtakes his eardrums. His skin is numb. Dean's vision blurs with tears and he wants to shake them away. He wraps his hands around the nape of his neck, pulling at his hair like he would pull on a  
t-shirt to take it off, only his hands are fisted in his hair, not cotton. He doesn't want to cry. Dean wants to stand up, brush himself off, and move on. Sam never let’s him do anything he wants. Even in death. Dean can't bear to watch his brother die over and over, but he watches once. It was a clean blow, quick. A sharp knife to his brother's lower back. A big guy called Jake. Sam stops running and tenses, arm muscles taut at his sides. His expression is confused, like he doesn't know what hit him. Well, Dean thinks, he probably doesn't. He dismisses the thought.

Dean's hands rise to his head and he curls himself over his knees, head resting on the floor. He needs to block everything out. Everything. He needs to make his thoughts stop. Just stop. Dean can't do this. He can't. Life without his little brother to make life Hell for him was no life at all. His brother who always defied his father; his brother, who always got the last of everything, just because Dean couldn't stand to see Sam upset; his brother, who loved and was loved unconditionally by Dean. He couldn't let him go. And he wouldn't.

:::

Dean wakes as the sun rises, wiping tears from his eyes. He hated sleeping. Most nights he couldn't. When he could, it was the same dream, over and over again. He would relive the worst night of his life. The night that has given him purpose. Has given him a reason to be here. His motivation and enthusiasm. It's every reason that he's still alive. For now.  
Dean palms the knife he slept with, his fingers itching for blood on them. There is no reason to wait, now. No reason to hide beneath a bush, waiting for a tribute to find him. No, he will seek them out. He will burn anyone in his way. If he has to stab his way into Hell to be with his brother, so be it. He will murder the same way part of his soul was shattered and torn: a knife in the back. A knife anywhere, as long as it hurt. As long as it was enough to give Dean a one way ticket Downstairs. 

Dean doesn't want to win the Games. Not in the end. If he told anyone they'd give him crap about sticking with his family. What they don't realise is where his family is. Not here. Not on this soil. His family is a long way away. And the Capitol has given him an easy way in. His family definitely isn't his father, who left him to his own devices to drink away his pain. It definitely wasn't him. Dean has nobody else but his brother. There's nothing much else Dean can do but walk. He plans to do it for a while. From day to night to day again. And whoever walks between him and his destination will come down with him.


End file.
